The summer I turned 12 my parents offered me a choice. I could get the braces I needed (for mostly cosmetic reasons) or I could go back to camp for a 4th summer. They couldn’t afford both.

I chose camp.

As much as I’ve wrung my hands over that choice, I don’t regret it one bit. Camp made me. How else can I explain the fact that I remember almost every word to our Color War theme songs over twenty five years later?

Camp is one of the things that I’ve struggled with as a parent, particularly one on the west coast. Going off to camp was a common rite of passage back east where I grew up. Everyone came back to school with tales of bunk raids and mammoth mosquito bites. But here in Cali all the overnight camps I’ve investigated seem so specialized. They seem focused on a skill or a talent or cementing a religious belief… So much so that I’ve even investigated sending my kids back to my own Catskills stomping grounds just so they too can experience that bonfires burning, crickets chirping, lungful of sunshine summer camp feeling that was so much a part of my youth.

But man, it’s expensive to fly kids back east for summer camp. Particularly when they need braces!

This is just one reason I’m thrilled to have discovered Catalina Island Camps.

Ciaran Blumenfeld is a writer and designer (Little Lubbaloo, Francie Pants). Practically every tot in tinseltown has worn her creations at one time or another but she designed her lines with her own 4 adorable kids in mind. Ciaran is the founder and publisher of Momfluential Media, a site that highlights the most influential moms online.